The Bay Area Community Informatics Project (BACIP) represents a consortium of rural Oregon Coast healthcare organizations that wishes to implement health information technology. We recognize the need for efficient and timely transmission of patient data to achieve the goals of improving safety and quality of care, reducing medical errors, improving patient satisfaction with care, and obtaining better outcomes in chronic disease management. Our region is certified as a Health Provider Shortage Area, and our local hospital is a Sole Community Provider and Rural Referral Center with 501(c)3 status. Six local institutions deliver 95% of the medical care to our area which uniquely positions us to form a community-based health network, since a collaboration of these six entities would bring together a complete clinical record for our citizens. We are committed to an open process that includes our local acute care hospital and several outpatient clinics, home health agencies, and nursing homes. Our mission is to promote the electronic exchange of data between health care organizations in order to provide caregivers accurate and up to date information. Our immediate goals include planning and establishing a secure fiber optic connection between our primary performance sites to begin the transmission of patient demographic data, medical transcription files, laboratory results, and radiographic images. Since many of our members are searching for electronic patient records and clinical information systems, we intend to establish interfaces based on an HL7 format to allow each organization to send and receive standardized data regardless of their current or future computer systems. Our longer term goals include: expanding our role to involve other rural health districts, community hospitals and clinics along the rural Oregon coast; enabling the electronic communication of prescription information to local and regional pharmacies; and interfacing with other communities and tertiary referral centers to improve patient safety and clinical outcomes. [unreadable] [unreadable]